I dunno. Id like to see people trying. Actually, I do see people trying, there's a few intentional communities in the area, they just don't do the sort of publicity that One Community does. Observation seems to imply that the more likely a group of people is to actually be doing worthwhile work in this area is, the less likely they are to have extensively documented it.

This is true. Usually the people actually building and living in experimental sustainable communities have far more people skilled at building community systems, and fewer people skilled at (or with the time to work on) outreach and PR. Thing is, you really need both, but it's probably more effective to start out with more doers and fewer promoters than it is to go at it the other way around.

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“I’m guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk,” Charles Wick said. “It was very complicated.”

The thing is, there are SO many experimental communities around the world... it makes me wonder what, exactly, the brainstormers of One Community consider truly unique about their vision, especially given that they haven't actually implemented any of it yet? Of course, I'm sure that question would be considered "trolling", but I just am not seeing any convincing reason funders would want to back their experiment vs., for example, Findhorn Ecovillage, which seems based on essentially the same principles but has actually been putting them into practice for the last 30-odd years. http://www.ecovillagefindhorn.com/

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“I’m guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk,” Charles Wick said. “It was very complicated.”

Of course, though, as I mentioned before, most sustainability efforts and money are currently focused not on communes and other experimental communities, but on finding ways to make existing population centers more sustainable, because they are going to continue to exist as major population centers for the foreseeable future. http://www.sustainable.org/

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“I’m guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk,” Charles Wick said. “It was very complicated.”

Personally and without empiric evidence, I would opine that a self-sustainable community is not inherently scalable: The human race did well with between (total guess) 50 and 100 people, having enough diversity for some to partially specialize (hunter, thatcher, miller, various other ancient surnames), but being flexible enough to cover or support others in times of crisis; and also the communal ability to establish tribal codes of conduct ("social contract") so that being a dick to someone was being a dick to everyone.

Announcing a (relatively) new, massive community without nods or counterarguments to anthropology seems... reckless.

Personally and without empiric evidence, I would opine that a self-sustainable community is not inherently scalable: The human race did well with between (total guess) 50 and 100 people, having enough diversity for some to partially specialize (hunter, thatcher, miller, various other ancient surnames), but being flexible enough to cover or support others in times of crisis; and also the communal ability to establish tribal codes of conduct ("social contract") so that being a dick to someone was being a dick to everyone.

Announcing a (relatively) new, massive community without nods or counterarguments to anthropology seems... reckless.

One pig's shit fertilizes a garden. 1000 pigs make the infamous toxic poop bubbles in the vat liner, and the new guy has to shoot it with a shotgun.

I really wish I was making that up.

Anyway, the world can at present allow a population of 2 billion people more or less indefinitely. We have 7.5 billion people, and we add a net 200 people per minute (and that is with the declining birth rate.). Almost every problem we face has the same root cause: too many primates.

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" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Can we adjust for technology? Not sure how, but I was under the impression the Malthusian catastrophe was countered with the debunking of static assumptions about the amount of resources in a given unit of material available.

Can we adjust for technology? Not sure how, but I was under the impression the Malthusian catastrophe was countered with the debunking of static assumptions about the amount of resources in a given unit of material available.

The Malthusian catastrophe was based on raising food. We can raise food for 17 billion people (for a given value of food), and we can transport food for 10 billion people (both assuming current technologies and the will do to so, which is obviously not there in a free market environment).

The problem is waste disposal and energy generation. Good old Malthus was in no position to imagine a society so "successful" that it had nowhere to put its poop.

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" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

There are plenty of ideas of how to counter this, but the most effective one is "less primates". The principle bar to that is religious, economic, and cultural demands for large families.

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" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

There are plenty of ideas of how to counter this, but the most effective one is "less primates". The principle bar to that is religious, economic, and cultural demands for large families.

That's got the feel of a larger piece. Are you inclined and/or may I?

Go for it. I was going to approach waste disposal a bit more, but I'd also like to see what you have to say.

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" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Waste disposal, in particular poop, feels like a drastically neglected area in futuristic thought. May be because I haven't dived in deeply enough but I see a lot on energy generation, food production, water purification, and very little on dealing with poo. Considering that we can actually generate methane from poop this seems like a field that could use a lot more exploration.

Waste disposal, in particular poop, feels like a drastically neglected area in futuristic thought. May be because I haven't dived in deeply enough but I see a lot on energy generation, food production, water purification, and very little on dealing with poo. Considering that we can actually generate methane from poop this seems like a field that could use a lot more exploration.

If you could then turn the methane into longer-chain molecules you could make plastic out of poop.That is probably expensive.

Waste disposal, in particular poop, feels like a drastically neglected area in futuristic thought. May be because I haven't dived in deeply enough but I see a lot on energy generation, food production, water purification, and very little on dealing with poo. Considering that we can actually generate methane from poop this seems like a field that could use a lot more exploration.

It isn't neglected. It is in fact one of the biggest civil engineering subjects going. Moving shit faster - and what to do with it - is the single biggest concern urbanists have. I mentioned some numbers in the OP, and that's just for NYC.

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" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Waste disposal, in particular poop, feels like a drastically neglected area in futuristic thought. May be because I haven't dived in deeply enough but I see a lot on energy generation, food production, water purification, and very little on dealing with poo. Considering that we can actually generate methane from poop this seems like a field that could use a lot more exploration.

If you could then turn the methane into longer-chain molecules you could make plastic out of poop.That is probably expensive.

Incineration? That commune dude could have an eco shit incineration unit and harvest the heat. Spread the ash on crops maybe?

I don't think you guys realize just how much shit is generated how fast.

We are not talking about a mere few million gallons, here.

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" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Waste disposal, in particular poop, feels like a drastically neglected area in futuristic thought. May be because I haven't dived in deeply enough but I see a lot on energy generation, food production, water purification, and very little on dealing with poo. Considering that we can actually generate methane from poop this seems like a field that could use a lot more exploration.

If you could then turn the methane into longer-chain molecules you could make plastic out of poop.That is probably expensive.

Incineration? That commune dude could have an eco shit incineration unit and harvest the heat. Spread the ash on crops maybe?

On the small scale the process of methane extraction tends to kill off the dangerous pathogens, so you end up with something that can be used as fertilizer without incineration. Poop isn't the best fuel because it is all wet, so you'd have to extract the water first.